The Canadian Hunt
(Viewer Discretion Advised)
All three harp seal populations are commercially hunted, usually on their breeding grounds, and the current hunt in Canada has been described as the "largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world". The size of the harp seal hunt in Canada increased significantly in the mid-1990s, aided by government subsidies, and the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for the 2006 year was 335.000.. The reported total of harp seals killed during the 2003 season was 289.512 . A total of 365.971 harp seals were officially reported as being killed during the 2004 season and 389.500 in the 2005 season. This year sealers also found difficulties in reaching a less concentrated distribution of seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence section of the hunt due to the early breaking up and melting of the ice there.
HSUS (Copyright)
Although the youngest pups are protected (supposedly), harp seals are weaned and lose their white coats when only two weeks old, making them fair game for hunters.
IFAW (copywright)
Seal hunters call them “beaters” – seal pups who are at least two weeks old. Once a baby seal starts to molt even part of its white coat, the Canadian Government allows hunters to beat the pups to death with a club or a large ice-pick-like hakapik and to shot them. There have even been reports of sealers killing mothers who try to protect their unweaned pups. The ragged jackets are as beautiful as the white baby seals , just begining to loose the white fur , I personally think that seals are amazing , regardless of their age .
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The actual number of harp seals killed by the hunt each year is believed to be much higher than the official figures due to seals "struck and lost", as well as those not reported and those illegally killed. A recent report indicated that at least 26.000 more seals should be added to the official figures in order to obtain the true extent of the kill, and it has recently been shown that unrecorded losses resulted in the actual number of seals killed in the Canadian hunt exceeding the quotas by up to 100,000 seals each year from 1996-1998.
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Taking into account this unrecorded killing as well as the killing of harp seals in the unregulated open-water hunt in Greenland, along with mortality caused by fisheries bycatch, it has been estimated that a total of around 465,000 harp seals in the northwest Atlantic population were killed each year from 1997-1999. These figures exceed the current replacement yields of the population and there is therefore concern that the population is declining as a result. The level of the current hunt is, on average, at the same level as it was in the 1950s - 1970s, when the northwest Atlantic harp seal population declined by as much as 50%. Population models considered by a meeting of the Canadian National Marine Mammal Review Committee calculated that the harp seal population would decline if hunting were to continue at the current level and age structure.
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The killing of "whitecoats" (pups younger than 2-3 weeks) for their fur was a major part of the Canadian and East and West Ice hunts. In 1983 however the European Economic Community, in response to public opinion, instituted a ban on the import of whitecoat products, a move that resulted in a drop in the number of seals killed. The hunting of whitecoats in Canada for commercial purposes has now been banned since 1987, but is still permitted for personal use.
It is thought that the illegal killing of whitecoats may have taken place in 1997 when a conservation group reported that up to 20,000 whitecoats had been killed and illegally sold.
IFAW (Copyright)
These pups have yet to eat their first solid food or learn how to swim. When the large sealing vessels arrive, they literally have nowhere to escape. The skin is taken out and the carcass is left to roth in the ice. The hunters , don't have any use for the rest of the body. Ocassionaly , the flippers are taken and the male genitals .This is NOT a hunt for survival , not a hunt to feed humans , it's plain vanity and politics.
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Canadian sealers are currently attempting to find and create new markets for harp seal products, both in Canada and internationally, and to persuade the United States and the European Union to lift trade barriers preventing the import of seal products. Harp seal oil is being actively marketed, while male harp seal genitals are being exported to the Asian aphrodisiac market. There is also a steady production of seal leather, fur and meat products. A 2005 opinion poll released showed that 69% of Canadians wanted the east coast hunt to end. In addition, an economic analysis of the harp and hooded seal hunt concluded that if subsidies were eliminated, and the trade in seal penises for aphrodisiacs were discounted, then the net value of the hunt to Canada as a whole was zero. The 2000 sealing season was the first since 1995 without a direct federal government subsidy for seal meat and the industry admitted before the hunt began that there were still over 100,000 harp seal pelts stockpiled and unsold from 1999. Seal meat that could not be sold was reportedly thrown overboard during the 1999 hunt. In March 2001 a report analysing official government trade statistics revealed that Canada had exported only 51% per cent of the almost 2 million pelts taken from harp and hooded seals killed between 1982 and 1999, further questioning the viability of the sealing industry given the low level of international demand for seal pelts.
 (IFAW Copywright)
"Mr. Speaker, I would like to see the 6 million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed and sold, or destroyed and burned. I do not care what happens to them... the more they kill the better I will love it."
John Efford, Ex Minister of Natural Resources (Canada)
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Animal welfare violations during the hunt have been documented by conservation groups, video evidence showing seals being skinned, cut open and dragged with hooks while still alive, being clubbed with wooden sticks or boat hooks, and being left to suffer injured for long periods before being killed. Video footage has also shown a Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker squashing seals in its path in its efforts to give the sealers better access to the ice floes. Such video evidence has resulted in successful prosecutions of sealers under the Canadian Criminal Code. Sealing interests are however calling for photographers, whose presence is already severely restricted and who have been attacked by sealers, to be banned from recording the hunt altogether.
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"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mahatma Gandhi , India
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A blood covered Ice Floe after seal hunt.
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Before....
and after.... |
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